[Music] [Ravi Santhanam] My conversation with you all is today all about how MarTech is being used to help the people on the ground. Invariably, everybody assumes MarTech is all about digital, online, direct consumer conversations. Today, I'm going to talk about what is it that we have done leveraging MarTech to help people on the ground.
A quick introduction about our bank.
We are the 11th largest bank in the world, only operating out of the country called India, 21,000 physical banking outlets we have, more than 200,000 employees, as on date today, $160 billion market cap, and more than 90 million plus customers. And that's how we serve. We are a full-fledged commercial bank across retail, SMB, and the wholesale and corporate and investment bank.
The biggest question that we all get asked, I'm sure many of you who are working in marketing has been asked this question is, what is your contribution and how do you measure it? And the famous statements always have been like, "Yes, we do know the 50% of it is measurable impactful, which 50% nobody knows," but it all changed with specifically banking.
Banking has a very different connotation because all of us assume that banking means the branch, physical branch, and the presence gives you the safety of the network that is available. And today if I ask you how many of you go to a branch, I think many of us would say no and we all do it digitally. Almost everything is done digitally. And you will see the products are all digital. And particularly in the US if I have to assume that even the card that you have, which is the only physical form of a banking product that you hold, is in your Apple Pay wallet. So you don't use a banking product in your hand compared to any other industry where it is all digital, whereas the presence is all physical. So this is unique to banking and most of these digital products, the accounts, the loans, the mortgages that you have are all served digitally to you and you actually consume it digitally. So what is it that is we can do becomes extremely large for a marketer because everything is digital here.
So I'll just give you a quick background when I joined the bank. I come from telecom background, retail industry. So when I joined the bank in 2018, what is it that was happening in the country called India? E-commerce was exploding, Amazon, Flipkart. Flipkart is today owned by Walmart. E-commerce was exploding. People were buying more and more things online, and India had a unique advantage of creating a digital identity for every one of its citizens. More than 1.4 billion Indian citizens today have a unique digital identity where the face is scanned, the iris is scanned, and the thumbprint is available. And you can go and put a thumbprint and people can identify you. And that's available from the government side. That's a digital stack that was done.
People have moved to transactions on the digital side, so money transfer was happening digitally, but acquisition and service was not happening digitally, but all the transactions have moved to the digital world. And even in the information technology side, more and more of APIs and microservices was coming in, wherein the banks were willing to go ahead and modernize their legacy systems. With this background, we set up an ambition for the first question that we were talking about saying, how do you measure the contribution? We said, we will contribute directly to business generation. And as you all know, banks make money when you borrow.
When you put money in the bank, it's a cost for the bank. But when you borrow is where the banks make money. So we said we will directly contribute to business generation and we put up a vision saying that 25% of the business the bank does, we will do with zero human touch. I talked about 21,000 banking outlets, 200,000 employees who are generating business, and we put up a bold vision saying that, with everything going digital, how can we actually make direct contribution to business? Twenty-five percent of the business will be generated with no human touch. We put up this vision.
Why did we put up this vision? So that we can actually go ahead and ask for investments. Because every time when you go and ask for technology investments in marketing, people keep coming back and asking saying that, "Okay, you're influencing. What happens after that? Post influence, what do you do? How is it measured? And how do I know that you have actually influenced?" We said, "We'll directly contribute." We'll not go ahead on the measurement basis of saying attributable business. This will be directly attributable to the business that we generate where no human is involved.
What are the three things that we wanted to do to get to this 25%? The first thing is to generate traffic. How do we actually get consumers to come to your digital properties? If you get more and more of your consumers to come to the digital properties, you have the ability to go ahead and engage with them. So we said, okay, we'll first work on generating traffic for the bank's digital properties. The second thing is as soon as a customer comes into the digital property, we need to personalize and engage them in a conversation on a one on one basis. How do we do that? We can't just treat everybody as the same. We have to talk to every individual customer based on their past behavior, based on the past records, and banking being a first-party data generating company, we have all the information that was available. So how do we actually go ahead and do the personalization? The third thing is if you are able to get traffic, have a conversation with the customers when they come on to the digital properties and engage with them, what do you do after that? The whole conversation is all about generating a lead for the bank so that they can go ahead and buy a product of the bank. So we said we'll invest in journeys.
For the customer to come on to the digital properties, we first have to understand the customers.
Who are they? What is it that we can do as investment for a full 360 degree view of the customer? So we did a lot of work first on Analytics. I have an 80-member data science team working in marketing. That's the kind of investments we have made wherein we got everything in terms of all the channels of engagement across the spectrum, whether it is a bank branch, whether it is a call center, whether it is an email which they are engaging with or it's an SMS which they click, every channel when they come onto the website, what is it that they are doing, we actually collated all this information. We run extensive analytics to understand who is this customer. That's the first investment we made. The second is while they come on their own for a transaction, we also reach out to them and how do we actually go ahead and reach out to them across the channels. So we've spent a lot of money and investment and time and effort on omnichannel communication investments.
From a MarTech point of view, the personalization investment started off with the first product we took from Adobe was the Adobe Analytics so that we can start measuring who is coming in, what is it that they are doing, and what is it that the impact of what our investments we are doing in the rest of the area, how is it shaping up. And the second is to target how do we actually personalize every interaction. That's what we started doing it.
We started, we definitely moved as soon as started personalization. We had a lot more interest that is being envisaged by the customers, and we started moving our contribution slowly and steadily, but we stuck a point where we were only generating leads and giving it to the physical salespeople on the ground, and that's not helping because at the end of the day, people were still questioning. This lead could have come directly by the customer walking in. You are still attributing it to marketing, communication. How do we know that? We got stuck here. And the journeys were very difficult to build in terms of actually consuming a product. All the journeys in terms of transactions were happening, but a sales and a service journey was not happening in the country.
So we first looked at what is it that we have done as a technology investment inside the IT organization and we have opened up our entire core banking in terms of APIs and microservices so that people can actually consume those APIs. So we put up a digital sales tax on top of the core APIs. We took the charge and started making investments in auto-pay forms. We said, we'll create all the journeys ourselves wherein every customer whenever they are showing an interest, how do we actually take them through the complete journey of buying a card, for example, or applying for a mortgage and dispersing without a person in the middle. And that's the first investment we made on auto-pay forms.
First thing we did is every customer when they log in, we understand who the customer is, we personalize the entire journey. This is the offer that is available for you. This is a way to go ahead and consume that offer. So you click, you fill up the details. If they are preapproved, we actually go ahead and disperse the loan. We actually disperse the money. We started measuring because everybody was coming in. We understood where the drop-offs are happening so that we can go back to the IT folks and say, hey, here is a drop-off. This is the reason for the drop off we understand. How do we actually go ahead and correct it? And because of the investments that we have done, we could go ahead and retarget them across multiple channels.
Anybody who was dropping off from a journey, we actually retargeted using SMS, WhatsApp, email, a telecall so that they can come back into the journey again.
And continuously iterate saying that if a drop off is happening here what could be the reason. Let's do an A/B testing.
If you do an A/B testing, if this is the journey A, it is giving us some amount of conversions. If I change it to B, what happens, and we continuously iterate it and all the investments we did in MarTech was helping us to understand what kind of a journey will a consumer move forward.
This entire no-code gave a huge amount of empowerment to our IT organization because today business folks can go back and say, "Hey, I want to change the journeys." You're not dependent on IT organization anymore because you can just go ahead and change the journey using the target in terms of A versus B, and you can measure it. You can measure the impact, and it is no more one versus another. It is actually consumer data that was helping us shape up the journeys. And we actually transform the consumer experience end to end because the visibility that we created across the organization, makes sure every business folk, every product guy will look at the journey and say, my customer is dropping here. "What is the reason for the drop off? I assumed this. Let me change it." And next day morning, you will come to see whether it is working or not and you again change it, and that's a kind of empowerment we gave to the whole organization in terms of team.
Moment we did this across various products and services, we started going up. And in 2022, we moved up to a significant amount of contribution because the bottleneck of experimentation was removed.
Today, we are at more than 10% contribution in many of our loan sales and more than 15% of the credit card sales that happened in the bank is directly contributed by marketing with no person in the middle.
And if you can see the right hand side a small analytics dashboard that we have, everybody has it in their mobile application. You can see what is the amount that was dispersed from March 1 to March 13 compared to the last year. What's the kind of growth we are seeing? These are all in rupees. This amount of money is getting dispersed today and these are all the channels which are contributing. And what is the impact of each channel? How it is contributing? Measurable, no man in the middle, no human in the middle, and that's the kind of thing. And this is coming at one fifth the cost of the physical channel. Today, we are well in our way. We dispersed more than $3 billion per annum with no human in the middle. We contribute to more than a million card sales in the bank out of the 6 million that we do with no man in the middle.
In 2023, we started introspecting because of the fact that once you start directly contributing, what is a horizontal function called marketing suddenly becomes a vertical and you have a lot of conflict.
Saying that, you are taking my business away. This business could have been done by me as a salesperson and you are taking it away.
So suddenly, you have seen a conflict in the organization and we said, okay, we are having a win in terms of our vision, but the whole organization, how can we actually enhance the productivity of everybody using the same investment we have done? And what is the investment we have done? After every journey, this is the final thing that's saying that, hey, your amount has been done. Whatever you came for to purchase has been done. This is the other products that you have because we had all the information. This is a kind of screen the customer sees at the end of a journey completion.
That much of information we already had in terms of what products and services the customer is eligible for. And once you have it, all the recommendation so that the customers can take the next product.
All the follow-up journeys, we made it available for the customers as part of our remarketing efforts. If this is available...
Why can't we build a single destination for all the products that we have that our customer is eligible for which we are anyway showing to the customer. How can I make it available for the employees? That was a question mark that we had saying that can we do it.
In the background, what is also happening in the country called India, today the QR code which you see suddenly had a huge behavior change with what is called as the UPI payments in the country. Forty-seven percent of the digital transaction, payment transactions in the world happens in India. That's the kind of power that this particular UPI payments, which is small ticket payments whether you want to buy a chocolate or whether you want to transfer money to an individual. Everything happens on the mobile by people scanning your QR code. And this is the behavior shift and you can see the number of transactions that are happening on a monthly basis. 16.6 billion transactions in the country is happening today on a monthly basis where people are scanning a QR code to make a payment to the neighborhood store or transfer money from one person to another person. We said, okay, this QR code behavior changing is happening, everybody has a mobile phone, everybody has a camera enabled, how can we actually leverage this QR code? So what we created? We said, here is a customer. We have done lot of investment in MarTech where in we are reaching the customer directly. Can the assisted sales side can be given the same leverage on the physical world, can we convert them into a digital world using the same investment because MarTech was never being thought of as an investment for the physical world. It was always being thought of as an investment for the digital world.
We have to just make sure that the customer understanding that we have, which we have created, the journeys that we have created is also available for the salespeople and the QR code magic happened. So what we created is for every individual employee in the organization, we created a QR code with their credentials embedded in the QR code. So when they're having a conversation with the customer, the customer has to be shown the QR code which they wear in their badge, ID cards, saying after the conversation you just show the QR code. Customer scans the QR code, which they are more comfortable doing it because they're doing it almost five times a day in terms of making payments. That particular scan makes sure that the employee details are embedded in the journey. If Ravi is the person who is having a conversation with the customer, Ravi's details are embedded because every sales ecosystem works on what is called as, will I get the credit for the sale I have done? That's the way the sales system operates. Moment they know that this actually is getting embedded in the journeys, so they were very comfortable showing to the customer the QR code. Moment the customer scans all the investments we have made is now coming to life for the employee also because they're now able to see what are the best offers for the customers that are available because the customers can see it on the screen and we are tying the device of the customer back to the bank and we are able to understand this is the customer, and we are showing the same screen that we showed directly to the customer, now to the employee, as well as to the customer. You can see on the screen saying that, hey, customer, you are being assisted by so and so employee. The customer gets a lot of conviction saying that, "Oh, this is all real. I'm standing in front of a employee and this is the same person, name is there, it's visible," and the employee gets an immediate email because we have tied up in the back end in the QR code, the employee credentials are embedded using the same campaign management system we have created for direct communication. Now we have sent an email to the employee saying these are the offers for the customers who are standing in front of you. The customer is not in front of you and they're doing it, maybe say, on a holiday, immediately you get an SMS as an email saying, hey, here is an alert. So and so customer has logged in using the QR code that you have given to them or using the link that you have given to them. And these are the products and services the customer is eligible for. Have a conversation. This is the number of the customer. We don't do it on SMS for privacy reasons, but on the email, it is an internal system. Customer name and the actual mobile number in terms of contact details are being shown to the employee. Moment the employee sees it, he says, "Wow. I'm sitting at home. I'm getting an email, and somebody is helping me complete a sale.
I'm sitting and I'm not doing anything, but I get a trigger, I immediately call up the customer, can I help you complete the deal?" If the customer drops off, the same retargeting efforts that we do, when the customer is coming directly, it's being redone now, and today they're saying, the customer was doing in front of me some conversation. They scan the QR code. They look at the product and offer and said, "I will take care of it. I'll do it later." And suddenly, the bank is working for the employee to complete the sale because till the time the sale is completed, the credentials of the employee are not removed from the journey. So the employee feels extremely confident that I can go ahead and convince the customer and show them the digital journey and not take the physical paper. And it will help me because I'm getting the credit for the sale.
The same Adobe Analytics dashboard I showed, look at the right hand side.
Today, you don't see the channels here, you see the name of the employees.
Across the organization, every employee is mapped and whatever sales are being done, it's now visible on the same dashboard. Now it is rolled up to the supervisor, to the supervisory chain, and every supervisory chain when they actually go ahead and log in to the same platform, analytics platform, they're able to see what is the contribution of their colleagues. What we need to do? What is the performance improvement compared to last month? This is actual data and you can see how much a fixed deposit amount has been booked and who in the employee value chain is having a good month, not having a good month so that they can have a conversation in terms of improving their performance. Suddenly, the whole thing changes because the supervisory ecosystem which never had a visibility in terms of the number of calls you made, the pipeline that you had as a great visibility in terms of the sale completion so that the conversation starts having a lot of meaning in terms of saying, hey, you are doing well. You're not doing well. What can I do to help you? And that kind of a conversation now is being made enabled by the same analytics investment, which I showed you earlier in terms of the channels that we control as marketeers. The same analytics investment is helping the entire supervisor ecosystem to get it done.
We have more than 60,000 active sales employees who are logging in every month. Customers' product sale of more than 150,000 happens through this platform now. We call it expressway and we proudly claim this is the largest business to employee platform that has been created using MarTech. So far we have heard of B2C, B2B. What we created is a B2E using the same MarTech investment.
I said our initial goal to substantiate the investment is all about getting direct contribution to the business of 25%. Now today we are running towards a new mission saying, how can we actually make sure that every visit, every employee, every interaction the customer can have with the bank, 100% of each one of those engagements and interactions has to be influenced by us, and that's a vision that we have. And with the same MarTech investments, we are able to employ experience because they'd now believe that there is a substantial investment being done by the bank to help them complete the sale. They don't have to keep following up with the customer. The bank is following up with the customer on a digital means to get them what their credit is for.
And this is the kind of things you will see in all our physical outlets. In every counter you will see this QR code with the employee's credentials in. And when they're having a conversation, they'll say go ahead and do it. And this is the kind of launch we did across the organization. And what you see, you will see me on the leftmost side there. These are senior leaders of the organization actually launching it in full-fledged form across the country. And this is all women's branch in Chennai where we had gone ahead for a training and you can see there every desk, every laptop has a QR code printed now. So when you actually open the laptop, the customer will be sitting, and you will see the QR code of the employee, and the employee will say please scan. We'll get to know, because at the end of the day, you don't have to look at your CRM. You don't have to look at any other data point because you just scan it and show the mobile to the employee and the employee will come to know or even if you don't show the mobile, the employee gets an email, he opens the email and he waits for the email. Say, I'm standing in front of so and so person and these are all the offer that are available for the customer to go ahead and consume.
Now what is it that we are planning to do in the future? The banking channel which is particularly the mobile app which most of you people are using to engage with the bank for transactions. We have made enough investments now to enable with for personalization in terms of auto-pay technologies. Our entire banking channel, the mobile app as well as the website logged in section, are all being built on AEM platforms so that we can go ahead and personalize every interaction that you will have, and we want to change all the communications towards making sure that customer comes into our banking channel. Today, we have more than, I'll say it in millions, 500 million visits a month in our banking channel because we are a huge country, it's a huge number of customers, 500 million visits we have in our banking channel, and there we want to personalize every interaction. So far we have done it on our public website, we have done it on all the push channels, now we are investing heavily to make sure that every visit to the banking channel actually gets personalized, and we start using the banking channel not for transaction but for sales and service.
When a customer comes in, we make sure that the vision of what we have in terms of personalization visible to the customer, the service that they are supposed to do is visible to the customer, and we expect our contribution to go from 25% to 50% in the next 5 years and very much possible. In summary, what we did in terms of levers is we put up a quantifiable vision in terms of putting direct contribution to the business. We made holistic investment. We did not invest in one tool or one track. We started with our vision. And what will help us get to our vision, including analytics, in terms of data science, 80-member data science team, and every other product or technology that will help us get into that vision and in sync with organizational goals. Organization always wants to do more sales at lower cost, and it actually helps when you can prove it with this.
The last point is we started thinking digital first, not digital only with MarTech.
Because everywhere people think MarTech means online channels and not physical employees. Today, what we are talking about is think digital, not digital channels with MarTech. Thank you.
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